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FA: Okay, I'm going to try and bring this home now. How would you sum up the accomplishment of the Heart Mountain resisters and the Fair Play Committee?

AH: I think what the Heart Mountain resisters and the Fair Play Committee did was to take such an unpopular sort of action. When you figure this is a reviled ethnic minority who are penned into a concentration camp and who find themselves in the most brittlely patriotic context imaginable. The principal perceived enemy being of the same ancestry, this being in the throes of wartime and even having the leadership of their own community enjoining 'em to cooperate, to then in the face of this amassed power and socialization, to say no. And the important thing they did is the same thing as James Omura is simply, they said no. And they were willing to pay the price that saying no meant. And it's a price that wasn't only paid in going to a penitentiary, but a price that was paid later on by finding themselves victimized by their own community after the camp experience. Why would they do it? Because there was a higher price and a higher sort of reward. And the price of saying yes when you felt no is a harder one psychologically to be able to absorb. And the important thing that they do obviously is they provide a palpable model of sort of right over might. And I think this is the thing that reverberates now through not only the Japanese American community but throughout the mainstream community; that these people are well on their way to becoming not only recognizable but recognizable American heroes. And I think in some quarters they already are but their heroism will only grow.

Clifford Uyeda is quoted as saying in Michi Weglyn's book that Michi Weglyn and her book will become more and more important with each passing generation. And I would say the same thing of these people. Heroes do not look good in the looking out a window in the context of a contemporary thing. Where they look good is in the rearview mirror when they can stand for their heroism and you don't have to get them mixed up with the politics and the power of the time. And I think in the future they're going to be shimmering heroes just like Thoreau. I mean, nobody liked Thoreau. Emerson said, "I'd sooner take the arm of an elm tree than to walk with Thoreau." Wasn't a friendly sort of person, and yet, you knew what, Emerson knew what his importance was and I think people will know what Jimmie's and the resisters' importance was.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.